New York restaurants could听be forced听to change their menus. A听local health authority plan听may force large restaurant chains to declare on their menus how fattening their food is.听
It would mean a calorie count next to every item on the menu. So Kevin Connolly sampled a healthy breakfast...
New York is one of those places where they're not afraid of new ideas.
The presence in Times Square of the Naked Cowboy is proof of that.
If you haven't seen him, he is the busker who entertains tourists in Times Square dressed only in Y-fronts, a Stetson and a pair of cowboy boots.
He is a showman who effortlessly earned his place on the Today programme, as we explore New York's plans to begin forcing major restaurant chains to label menus with the number of calories in every item on their menus.
He broke off from posing for photographs with Asian tourists to extemporise a short tune on the dangers of obesity and the virtues of chicken and vegetables.
I think it's fair to argue that if buskers are worrying about obesity, then it really has worked its way onto the American agenda.
I met the Naked Cowboy on my way between appointments with the nutritionist Heather Bauer and Chuck Hunt from the New York State Restaurateurs Association, who represent opposite points of view on the issue of food labelling.
It is a dispute currently being fought in court between various food trade groups and the New York health authorities. Expect a verdict soon, but expect the whole thing to go to appeal too.
Heather and I had breakfast in the Skylight Diner on West 34th Street in New York. It's not the kind of restaurant which will be affected by the new rules because it's a family business and not part of a chain, but it exudes the Manhattan atmosphere. 
Under her expert guidance my breakfast morphed from a choice between steak and eggs or corned beef hash into some scrambled eggs and ham with some lightly grilled tomato. The fruit which followed came as nature intended - and not, as I had hoped, in pie form.
She reluctantly agreed not to insist on an omelette made just from the whites of eggs, when I politely insisted that I'd prefer not to eat at all.
The question is: would I have the strength of character to make those choices for myself in a restaurant which offered me the right information? It's all a lot easier when you have a charming - and insistent - professional nutritionist to hand.
Incidentally, one piece of Heather鈥檚 advice that stuck in my mind was that you should never eat a piece of protein larger than a palm sized computer handset - a considerable blow for someone like me used to eating steaks the size of desktop computers, never mind miniature ones.
The restaurateurs of New York would argue that they have no problem with the kind of information and advice that Heather offers 鈥 indeed, they point out that their members offer plenty of healthy choices already.
Chuck Hunt, one of the restaurant industry's lobbyists, says that the labelling is unnecessary and somehow un-American.
The idea of the state lecturing about what you should and shouldn't eat simply going against the grain in a country that generally likes its government small, and its steaks huge.
鈥淥ur problem,鈥 he told me, 鈥渋s that the Health Department is saying it's their way, or no way at all.鈥
The case is currently before the courts, and whichever way the verdict goes, there are certain to be appeals.
But the issue of clear restaurant labelling of the calorific content of foods is now on the agenda in New York and that means it will soon be on the agenda everywhere else too.
Remember how smoking bans began to spread in Europe once they'd gained a little traction in American society? If the health authorities here prevail, and fast-food chains are subjected to compulsory labelling, then expect the idea to spread, first to family businesses like Mom'n'Pop diners, and then to the wider world.
